Lessons from my 3 biggest mistakes in life

Imagine that you had a time machine
What advice would you give to your former self?

What mistakes would you prevent yourself from making?

How would your life be different now if you did have that opportunity to travel back in time?

If you’ve done any self reflection on the past (or pointless dwelling on it like a leaf in the wind), you might have asked yourself a question like that. It’s important to learn from our past.

Why?

Because I’m sure your past self is pure of heart, but maybe also dumb of ass!

In Dutch, we have a quote that roughly translates to:

“Even a donkey doesn’t bump his head into the same rock twice.”

Are you smarter than a donkey?
Or are you making the same mistakes over and over again?

The reason why we should spend time in self-reflection is so that we can see the patterns with perfect 20/20 hindsight. We analyze the past so that we can do better in the present and create a better future!

But you know what’s even better?

Learn from the mistakes of others!

Luckily, you’re reading the newsletter who totally was dumb of ass, dumb of mind, dumb of soul, dumb of dumbness. Heck… if my former self was a wizard, he’d be call Dumbledore (minus epic skills)!

So let me open my bag of mistakes share some important life lessons.

1. Trying to run before being able to walk

This one screwed me over royally and set me back years!

Back in the day, when I was roughly 18, I tried getting my dumb ass into business. I tried network marketing. I was eager, motivated and ready to take on the world!

Except, I forgot that I lack a few things:

• Discipline

• Consistency

• Social skills

• Confidence

• Persistence

• Productivity

• Focus

And there was one more thing, what was it again….?

Oh right, marketing knowledge!

Long story short, I was this kiddo with bigger dreams than skills and I ended up failing miserably. I devoted a year or two to it, got myself about €5000 in debt and I turned myself into a laughing stock among friends!

The Lesson

Be patient, my friend!

Build up your skills first, become the person capable of achieving your goals!

And secondly, you need to understand how your mind works.

2. I worked against my mind

After that fiasco, I tried working on myself rather than business.

See? I did have some reason back then after all!

However, it again felt like banging my head against a wall. Sidenote: As a clumsy person, try avoiding this as it hurts like hell! Anyhuu, for multiple years I made no progress whatsoever…

I felt terrible about myself! Sad face :(

The one thing that literally changed everything was that I started learning how the mind works. Note: Check out the resources below. While learning I started to finally understand why my efforts were pretty much in vain.

Turns out, I worked against my own mind, rather than with it!

In the process of learning about my mind, I figured out how to create better habits. I learned how to change my internal dialog. I’ve been able to resolve trauma from my past and feel more confident, and much more!

My recommendation?

Start learning for at least 30 minutes a day about the mind.

It’s the single best time investment you could possibly make!

3. Valuing other people’s opinions over my own

This is something I regret so freaking much…

Perhaps you know the same kind of regret where you tried doing something, other people told you that it would never work… and you gave up on it. You let their doubt become your downfall.

If so, I feel for you…

You know what the worst part of it was for me?

Looking in hindsight, I realized years later that I was on the right track! Meaning that had I just followed this path, it would have worked out fantastically! However, I let outside criticism crush me like the Hulk would crush a cookie.

Here’s what happened to my confidence:

The lesson you can take from this:

Develop your mind
Build your confidence
Do your own thinking
Gain your own trust

As you do these things, you develop a strong sense of self, which is what I utterly lacked in those days. With this strong sense of who you are and what you stand for, you’ll be able to drown out of the other voices of criticism!

Easy?

No!

Worth it?

Heck yes!

A Life lesson from our 4-pawed friends

Let’s flip it around 180 degrees!

In this newsletter, I’ve been talking a lot about the need to reflect back upon your past. The need to face your failures, learn lessons from your mistakes and to use that to become better today.

There’s a caveat however…

You’ve got to live in the present!

There is a reason why dogs always look happy, and it’s because of this one simple fact. They don’t dwell on their past like we do. They don’t fear or contemplate the future either (96% of which will never happen by the way!).

They simply live right there where their paws are!

Think of your past like a rearview mirror:

It’s useful, but if you only look into it, you’re going to crash into something!

Use the past to learn in the present.
Focus on the future to set your course.
But spend 90% of your time in the present.

You can’t change the past, you can’t fix the future, so focus on what you can control right here, right now in the present!

Additional Resources: Start understanding your mind!

Taking Action to Move Ahead

There are two things I would invite you to do today:

1. The single best way to spend part of your day is to learn about the mind, period! Almost nothing is going to help you achieve more things faster than this. Use the resources above as a starting point or look for sources that resonate with you.

The second thing is totally unrelated to my 3 lessons from this newsletter.

2. For just a couple of minutes, sit yourself down in a quiet place. Think about something you regret or a mistake that you’ve made. Then ask yourself “What lesson can I take from this?” or “How can I prevent this in the future?”.

Remember, don’t spend all your time dwelling on the past!

Use this reflection to extract the nuggets of wisdom from your past and then get your ass right back to the present so that you can create the future that you have always dreamt of!

Quick request for you:
As of right now, I’m an incredibly small content creator trying to bring positive change to people. If you get value from this newsletter, please share it with someone that you think would love it as well!

You’d have my gratitude! But until then, be legendary my friend!